It was David Cameron’s misfortune that his speech on Europe was followed so swiftly by the announcement of the death of Helmut Schmidt. The one put the other in some unfavorable kind of perspective.

Schmidt’s political record as finance minister (1972-74) and chancellor (1974-82) was shaped by the oil crisis and by the Cold War. He set Germany on course for economic success, he contributed to the development of both the G7 and the European Economic Community, and in the subsequent decades he was a respected voice on international affairs — in the U.S. and Asia as much as Europe. Looking back at the photographs that are such a feature of those long-prepared Schmidt obituaries is to be transported back through the history of post-war Europe.

At his death, Schmidt was six weeks short of 97 years-old. David Cameron, 49 last month, is barely more than half that and he does not have the same chain-smoking habits and his political career post-dates black-and-white photography. So at one level it is unremarkable that, even though he has already served five and a half years as prime minister, by comparison with Schmidt he appears a fresh-faced ingénue. But those are not the only reasons that Cameron does not convey the same impression of having lived through events.

Cameron’s look of ruddy-cheeked innocence has become a part of his political persona — the style has become hard to disentangle from the substance. British political commentators occasionally mock his time as a director of corporate affairs for a television company and it is easy to see the temptation. Cameron conveys an aura of detachment from events that is determinedly managerial. On the whole, the electorate finds this comforting — he gives the impression of being calm in a crisis, cool and competent. The downside is that he sometimes struggles to convey that he cares and he occasionally compensates with what seems synthetic passion or indignation.

We see the European Union as a means to an end, not an end in itself — David Cameron

Early on in his speech on EU membership, Cameron made a patriotic virtue of his detachment. “Like most British people, I come to this question with a frame of mind that is practical, not emotional. Head, not heart. I know some of our European partners may find that disappointing about Britain. But that is who we are. That is how we have always been as a nation. We are rigorously practical. We are obstinately down to earth. We are natural debunkers. We see the European Union as a means to an end, not an end in itself.”

The natural debunkers in his audience will have remarked that, despite this “head, not heart” declaration, later on in the speech Cameron promised that, if he was successful in exacting concessions from his European partners, then he would campaign for Britain’s continued membership of the EU “with all my heart and all my soul.”

That head-heart hesitation runs deep through Cameron’s handling of the Europe question. He is clearly inhibited about expressing emotional feelings for Britain’s membership of the EU (quite possibly because he does not feel any). But that leaves his audiences unconvinced about the depth of his intellectual support for the EU.

It is worth recalling that he suffered no such inhibition when giving an uncharacteristically emotional speech on the eve of Scotland’s 2014 referendum on independence when he said: “Speaking of family — that is quite simply how I feel about this. We are a family. The United Kingdom is not one nation. We are four nations in a single country. That can be difficult but it is wonderful … A family is not a compromise, or a second best, it is a magical identity, that makes us more together than we can ever be apart so please — do not break this family apart.” His appeal to the Scottish voters concluded: “We want you to stay. Head and heart and soul, we want you to stay.”

This speech on Europe had no such raw emotion, simply the promise that emotion would be summoned up if the oh-so-rational negotiations were fruitful. Only once did the language climb to the foothills of oratory, in a passage about contributing to the security of Europe.

“Britain has contributed in full measure to the freedom that Europe’s nations enjoy today. Across the continent, from Ypres to Monte Cassino, from Bayeux to Arnhem, … in stone cold cemeteries lie the remains of British servicemen who crossed the Channel to help subjugated nations throw off the tyrant’s yoke…and return liberty to her rightful place on what Churchill called ‘this noble continent’.”

Borrowing a phrase from Churchill improved the cadences of Cameron’s speech, but it hardly lent clarity to his message. The natural debunkers (a whole nation of them!) might recall that Churchill used the phrase “this noble continent” at the opening of a speech in Zurich in 1946, in which he urged a partnership between France and Germany and the formation of “a kind of United States of Europe.” The speech ends, “Therefore I say to you, ‘Let Europe arise!’” However, in his subsequent prime ministership (1951-55), Churchill kept Britain out of early moves to European co-operation. So what, his audience might reasonably ask, did Cameron mean by that allusion?

Inadvertently, perhaps, Cameron reminded us that the language of modern-day speechmaking is often determinedly downbeat. Contrast Churchill’s rhetoric, “Can the peoples of Europe rise to the heights of the soul and of the instinct and spirit of man?” with Cameron’s unconvincingly blokeish references to “Brits”. Politicians are no longer confident in their ability to persuade, which usually requires a combined rhetorical appeal to both heart and head. In an age of 24-hour newsfeeds and Twitter, the speechmakers want to get across a message — the soundbite, the headline — but they rarely attempt all-out persuasion.

So back to Helmut Schmidt, who as chancellor of Germany came to London in November 1974 for talks with Harold Wilson. The latter had recently been re-elected as British prime minister with a narrow majority in the second general election of that year. The British government was seeking a re-negotiation of its terms of membership of the European Economic Community (it had joined in 1973). Schmidt, who had been critical of the Common Agricultural Policy, was regarded as an ally in the cause. In the Foreign Office’s official history of Britain and the European Community, the diplomat-turned-historian Stephen Wall records how Schmidt pressed Wilson as to whether he personally supported EU membership and criticized Wilson’s sense that the U.K. was entitled to treaty reform.

British prime minister Harold Wilson, US president Gerald Ford, French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing and German chancellor Helmut Schmidt speak to each other, August 8, 1975. STF/AFP/Getty

“Schmidt concluded that his record entitled him to say that the British government did not need to convince him of the desirability of continuing British membership of the EEC. The problem remained that he still did not know what the British Government needed in order to be able to recommend continuing membership to the British people. He needed to be told. Wilson promised to send him a detailed paper.”

A mere 41 years on, a British prime minister is once again struggling to articulate for its EU partners what it wants, and to convince them that its motives are pure.

On that same visit to London, at the invitation of Jim Callaghan, the foreign minister who was also chairman of the Labour Party, Schmidt addressed the annual Labour Party Conference, to make the case for Britain’s continuing membership of the EEC. The German chancellor appealed to the Labour party ranks, on the grounds of socialist solidarity, not to leave the EU. According to Nicholas Henderson, the British ambassador to Germany, the speech was very well received. Henderson’s reports of Schmidt’s discussions with Wilson, and with his predecessor Edward Heath, fizz with Schmidt’s intellectual energy.

It is easy to remark that it would not happen now. The worlds of the referendum campaign of 1974-75 and the coming referendum are very different, and it perhaps appears unfair to compare the mindset of someone born in 1918 with that of someone born in 1966, particularly in their approaches to international affairs.

The more painful question posed by the Schmidt-Cameron contrast, however, is whether the apparent loss of faith in political debate and intellectual argument is irreversible. If so, then it is hard to see how more speeches from Cameron will keep Britain in the EU.